


Enemy

by grimeysociety



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Breaking Up & Making Up, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Darcy Lewis Feels, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:08:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24893686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grimeysociety/pseuds/grimeysociety
Summary: Friendship with Bucky began like pulling a thorn out of a wolf’s paw.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Darcy Lewis
Comments: 146
Kudos: 496
Collections: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2020





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been threatening this a while, at least to sarahbeniel, ever since I wrote _Fuck it I love you_ last year, which has a lot of the similar themes of this story. I wrote this for all the angsty, smutty fun I love to subject others to. I want a rollercoaster, I want the pain and the fucking tenderness and _yearning_ , my dude. 
> 
> I'm also working three of my Bucky Barnes Bingo 2020 squares in, specifically U1: "Bucky/Darcy", U2: "Partner in Crime" & C1: "Never Again".

_I can't open my mouth and forget how to talk_  
 _'Cause even if I could, wouldn't know where to start_  
 _Wouldn't know when to stop_  
\- **"Punisher" by Phoebe Bridgers**

i.

Friendship with Bucky began like pulling a thorn out of a wolf’s paw.

Darcy wasn’t afraid of him, which she supposed he was terrified of. Her irreverence had often annoyed people since she began working with Jane in the Tower. With Bucky, Darcy wasn’t sure if she wanted to be heedless or if she just couldn’t help it. She oftentimes thought of the ways she could change, supposedly for the better. She compared herself to other women, women her age that seemed like grownups when Darcy was still pretending she was a contemporary of theirs.

She tended to overcompensate, wearing dirty sneakers and making jokes with everyone, especially anyone above her pay grade. Since she was a lab assistant with the same level of authority as Bruce Banner’s pet axolotl that lived in the tank behind her desk, those people to bother with her dry humor weren’t hard to come by.

She managed a handful of interactions with Bucky, pieces of surrogate conversations, because there was always someone else between them, either Steve or Sam, speaking for Bucky for most of the time. Darcy didn’t mind, she grew accustomed to his silent presence, his murmurs every so often when she’d ask him something in her teasing lilt.

It wasn’t until six months into knowing him that she was first alone with him, and it was by mistake. She let herself up onto the roof, contemplating Tinder as she cracked open her Diet Coke, the warm July evening rolling warm air through the city. She was sick of sitting under air-conditioners inside instead of breathing in any fresh air. The sun had finally set and she pushed the door to the outside open with her forearm, putting her can to her lips to sip.

She stopped dead, seeing a familiar figure facing the city, and his head whipped toward the sound of her arrival before he visibly deflated.

“Sorry.”

“S’okay,” he replied.

Darcy had to be seeing things, since there was a hint of a smile on his face, and she’d never seen it before, not in-person. She’d seen the news reels growing up, of the Howling Commandos laughing together. She wasn’t able to make the connection between the man she’d seen as a child and the one leaning over the railing.

She walked up to him, stopping at his side, not too close. Unlike Steve or Sam, she hadn’t invaded his personal space before. She didn’t poke or prod or shove when she giggled. He’d witnessed her do that plenty of times with his friends. She knew it meant something that he was choosing to stay as she drank her Coke beside him in silence for a couple minutes.

“I’ve never been up here before,” she said, and she saw his head turn slightly in the corner of her eye, toward him. “I’ve been here half a year and I never came up here. Isn’t that crazy?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t be such a blabbermouth, Buck,” she said, and she glanced his way, smirking.

She came back the next day, and then the next, and the next… until she lost count. It was a habit, no matter how sticky the air was, no matter how tired she was. It wasn’t a task, but a kind of reprieve from the rest of the world, going up there to stand with Bucky as the sun set or after the sky was already dark. She started bringing him a beer. It wasn’t until the third time she did _that_ that she decided he had enough warning before she clinked his bottle with hers.

“Cheers.”

“Cheers,” he murmured back.

Darcy smacked her lips loudly.

“So, I have a suggestion.”

Bucky swallowed, frowning at her slightly. By the expression on his face, he had little excitement about whatever was about to follow that sentence.

“You ever thought about asking out Jane?” she said.

She watched as his nose scrunched and an uneasy smile quirked his lips. He looked away, letting out a breath of a laugh. He shook his head, too. Four different little steps, and it was the most animated he’d ever been around her.

“She’s a strawberry Starburst, dude,” Darcy went on.

Bucky’s brows furrowed in confusion, and he wore it well, looking clueless.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“She’s a superstar,” Darcy said, shrugging a shoulder. “She’s like… what’s something you remember being like the best type of candy -? Wait, a Hershey bar! Jane’s a Hershey bar.”

She nodded at him, and he mirrored her eventually.

“Okay.”

“And you’re…” she made a gesture toward his general person, up and down. “Uh. Y’know. You’re okay, I guess.”

The frown was back, but he smirked at her, lifting his beer bottle to his lips for another drink. He drank in silence as Darcy began to list off Jane’s best qualities.

“She’s smart. She’s adorable. She’s committed to her work, she’s always honest. You’d be great together…”

She’d thought about this a few times, when Bucky had been in the labs, albeit briefly, with Steve a few days ago. Bucky kept looking around at all the equipment with what Darcy recognized as genuine interest. His eyes didn’t just glaze over. He didn’t ask to speak to someone who ‘doesn’t speak nerd’ like she’d heard some agents demand in the past. He was his quiet, brooding self, but he seemed to enjoy it. She saw him look at Jane more than once, too, with a vague interest.

Most men were interested in Jane, because she was little and fun-looking. Then they learned she was a genius and often got intimidated, but Bucky seemed to appreciate it.

“So, you want her number?” Darcy asked, and Bucky frowned again.

“Isn’t she dating Thor?”

“Currently, no,” Darcy said with a little sigh. “Why, you afraid to get in on a Norse god’s territory?”

“No,” Bucky said immediately. “Have you spoken to her about this?”

Darcy took a gulp of beer. “No… that is the more difficult step of this mission.”

“Mission,” Bucky repeated, and Darcy could hear the smile in his voice.

“Yeah, totally,” she said with a shrug. “Aren’t we partners in crime? I don’t think we’re technically supposed to be out here, and we’ve been doing this for weeks.”

Eventually, she’d be coming out here when it was snowing. She hadn’t meant to daydream about it, but she had. She could picture throwing a snowball in Bucky’s face the second she got the chance.

She heard his boot scuff the roof’s surface for a second and she glanced his way, seeing his eyes were downcast, and she felt something pass over her, a kind of fear she dreaded whenever she was in his presence.

She was always a little scared of disappointing him, or upsetting him so much without meaning to, because she was emotionally equipped with two left feet, so to speak.

“And what about you?” he murmured.

“What about me?” Darcy asked, hearing his voice was normal. “I’m up to my neck in men.”

She always deflected, and she was happy that he let the conversation drop. She used his natural quiet to her advantage, doing her best to ignore the way her heart had begun to hammer.

-

She’d never been in love. At least, not in love in the way that other seemed to be. Not how Jane was with Thor, or how her parents had been before they divorced when she was a kid. She’d seen their wedding video and wondered how they were the same people. She wondered when they decided to be so irrevocably mean to one another that they couldn’t look each other the same way. She wondered when people decided to become strangers again.

She hadn’t got that close to anyone, not even Ian. That fizzled out pretty fast once they were around each other long enough. They were better as friends and Darcy had wished him well. They still spoke on Facebook sometimes.

Darcy felt betrayed when Jane sing-songed:

“You _like_ him.”

She narrowed her eyes at her boss, before brushing off imaginary dirt from her pants with her hand, shrugging a shoulder.

“I tried to get him to ask you out, actually –”

“Oh, pfft,” Jane retorted, and Darcy opened her mouth in mock-hurt. “You only don’t go after him because you never date guys you actually like. Don’t look at me like that, I’m the voice of reason.”

“The woman who tried to use the same pen three times with the cap on before she realized this morning is the voice of reason?” Darcy drawled, before snapping her mouth shut once more.

-

She didn’t know what to do without making a fool of herself. She did it so often on purpose that any accidental embarrassment was always so much worse. Most of the time, she knew she wasn’t even on the same planet as Bucky, and it wasn’t just because he was gorgeous.

She had very little in common with him. They had the roof and the Tower, and they both were friends with Steve, but she didn’t know how to move on once Jane pointed it out.

_You like him._

So what? She didn’t particularly enjoy crushes. They were painful and weird, and definitely unnecessary. Jane was right – annoyingly, she was _always_ right – because Darcy never dated men she was particularly interested in. They were a mixture of safe options, and often ended up disappointing her. The routine of getting to know someone she shared a bed with for a few months was getting sadder the older she got, and she was so tired all the time even thinking about hopping on Tinder again to find a match she didn’t swoon over.

“You okay?”

Darcy’s eyes snapped to Bucky’s, and she remembered where she was. She’d managed to get through the last half hour with little conversation, like always, but this was the first time that Bucky had asked her that. She swallowed, seeing his eyes dip to her mouth as her lips parted, words useless.

“Uh, yeah.”

She was holding her phone, swiping left and right. She tried to shake the sudden nervousness she felt, too aware of the space between them having shrunk over the last few visits. Why hadn’t she noticed it with more caution? She’d probably been zoning out again. Darcy swore she was attention-deficit, and no-one believed her…

“What do you think?” she said suddenly, holding up her phone to Bucky.

He glanced at the screen, considering the picture of a guy with a thick beard and glasses, wearing plaid shirt over a Star Wars t-shirt.

“Be honest.”

“I don’t really know –”

“Jane would probably say he’s like me, but hairier and a little fatter and taller –”

Darcy stood on tip-toe to demonstrate and Bucky’s words fell away, his brows hiking.

“- and I’m trying to not let it bother me that _these guys_ are matching with me.”

“If it’s so depressin’, don’t do it,” Bucky said abruptly, and Darcy paused, surprised.

She lowered her phone awkwardly to her side, locking it. She looked over the edge and sighed, wishing she could roll her eyes at herself. She was surprised again when Bucky spoke up.

“Do you wanna… go watch a movie?”

“Hmm?” she said, meeting his gaze.

He pressed his lips together for a second, then frowned.

“Uh, if… if that’s somethin’ you’d be interested in? Downstairs?”

“In my apartment?” Darcy said, and Bucky’s eyes went to the side, as if he was considering it.

“Uh, sure. Better yours than mine…”

“Why?” she said, and Bucky cleared his throat.

“My place is sorta – it’s not ideal for visitors –”

“No, I mean, why – why a movie? Why do wanna watch a movie with me?” she said, feeling herself honest-to-God blush under Bucky’s big, blue eyes.

“To… hang out.”

There was a beat and Darcy considered opting out, keeping this only a rooftop friendship. She couldn’t deny wanting to be closer to him, even if they sat on opposite sides of her couch.

“Okay.”

-

It was the first of several weeks spent in Darcy’s living room. She tended to choose whatever movie they watched, though she asked Bucky for his input every time. He didn’t seem to know where to begin, so Darcy went back to what he’d missed.

The first night, she understood she’d downplayed the intimacy of it. She hadn’t estimated how close they’d be as they sat together and watched people on her little TV falling in love.

She could remember the ways she used to seduce boys by doing whatever they did in college – by drinking too much, laughing too loud and telling dirty jokes that never landed. The worst times were when she took acid and threw up in the local park, usually on a seesaw with a boy’s arm around her shoulders and grabbing her boob over her clothes.

Sitting with Bucky, it was a different world. He was so quiet and demanded nothing from her. She’d brush his shoulder with hers and feel her whole body respond, something incidental so devastating that she’d replay it for hours.

She did like him, a lot, which was why she had to keep it separate from everything. She had to keep it to herself, this horrible inconvenience, of wanting to hold him.

Everything changed when they shared a blanket. It started out with Darcy swaddling herself, and she kept catching Bucky looking over at the corner of it that brushed his thigh. Her couch really wasn’t fit for two people, not if one of them was Bucky’s size.

They were watching _Gentlemen Prefer Blondes_ , right after the iconic _Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best_ _Friend_ number, and Darcy had more or less watched Bucky’s face to see his reactions.

She kept doing that, watching him see the things she loved for the first time. She wanted him to like them, possibly love them, too. She knew she was in deep, and she hadn’t been like this in years.

He tugged the blanket and Darcy froze, their eyes meeting. It was only the edge of it between his two metal fingers, but he may as well have yanked it from her for how exposed Darcy suddenly felt.

“Uh,” Bucky said, predictably.

“You want some blanket?”

“Can we share?” he asked, and he was smiling, everything slipping back into the easiness of before.

It made her feel warm, a little stupid. Yet again, she was overthinking and making it more than it was. She felt braver when she spread the blanket out between them, and she settled back into her seat, telling herself it was okay, because he was her friend.

Bucky was _undeniably_ her friend.

“What’re you thinkin’ about,” he murmured, eyes forward.

He was slicker than he let on, which was kind of the point. He could read her well when she said nothing. His eyes finally swung back to meet hers, a little smile forming.

“Nothing, this is nice,” she said. She drew in a breath. “We should get you a girl so you spend less time with me. Spread that nice around.”

“Yeah?” he said, and he looked back at the TV, the air shifting.

They didn’t speak until the credits rolled, and Darcy was up from the couch, beginning to shut out the lights and move through her apartment. Any second now, Bucky would be picking up his jacket and putting it on, calling out to her that he was leaving.

Darcy moved into her bathroom, picking up her toothbrush from the cabinet before she ran it under the faucet, grabbing the toothpaste from the sink. She began to brush her teeth, hearing Bucky move around in the background.

Tomorrow was Friday. She needed to be up kind of early. She listened out for him, but heard no words. She jumped when she spotted him lingering in the doorway.

“You goin’ to bed?” he asked, and Darcy looked at him, glaring before she softened at his face.

He was just _staring_ at her, his arms folded. She shrugged, her toothbrush stuck in her mouth.

“Yeah, why?”

She brushed, as he slipped in beside her, and Darcy felt herself blush, wondering if he needed the bathroom and he didn’t know how to say it.

“Spit,” he said, and Darcy frowned, only half-listening.

“Huh? Oh.”

She turned her head, spitting into the sink. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, shutting the cabinet with her toothbrush inside. A second later, she felt Bucky’s fingers wrap around her wrist and she looked up at him, just in time to see him coming toward her, before he ducked his head to kiss her.

All he did was press his lips to hers in a chaste peck, the sound of their lips smacking echoing in Darcy’s head, and she went still, watching his eyes, waiting, hoping he wasn’t about to regret it, or run out…

“You didn’t mean that,” she said, and his eyes were on her mouth, his head tilting slightly.

“Really?”

He didn’t sound like himself. He didn’t sound shy and afraid, he was looking at her like he wanted to swallow her up, his hand coming down to her waist and pulling her into his chest.

“I didn’t _mean_ that?” he said, and Darcy blinked up at him.

“I…”

“You want me to prove it?”

The second time he kissed her, it was undeniable, with no hesitancy. It was slow and heady, Darcy’s stomach flooding with warm arousal, her eyes closing as his mouth slanted over hers, everything ending with her tongue sucked into his mouth.

“Hmm…”

Darcy made a sound to acknowledge just how good it was, her hands on is arms, her back arching into his touch.

When they broke apart, Darcy felt hot all over, her hands still grabbing, tugging his jacket off his shoulders, and they were shuffling back, out the door.

On the way, he was pulling off her shirt in between kisses and nips to her skin, their breaths turning to pants as they managed to make their way down the corridor and into her messy bedroom.

She moaned into his mouth when they landed on the bed together, his hands squeezing her ass and breast, her fingers deep in his hair.

Everything was blurring, and there was little ceremony in how they undressed and rolled together, Bucky ending up on top, his arm resting by her face as his other hand trailed down between them, Darcy’s breath hitching when he began to rub between her legs, teasing her with his thumb.

Darcy couldn’t keep kissing him, she had to break away as she felt herself on the precipice, her whole body trembling.

“Oh, God –”

Her nails bit into his skin as she lost her vision, their foreheads together, everything so hot and intense she could feel her eyes misting. Moments after she came crashing down, Bucky was lining himself up to her, the crown of his cock brushing her as Darcy shuddered through the aftershocks.

“Do it,” she whispered, and he obliged, both of them groaning.

He made a second sound, so overwhelmed, like a whimper, and Darcy watched his eyes squeeze shut, his instincts taking over to pull out and slam back in…

“Oh, God,” she said again, louder than before.

The stretch and the weight of him on top her, naked and holding her down only spurred her on, and she was chasing his lips, trying to kiss him hard as he picked up speed.

“Talk to me,” she whispered.

“I don’t think my brain’s workin’ too good,” he whispered back, and they both laughed, breathless.

“Oh, God,” Darcy babbled.

“I know,” he gasped, and he moaned, the same helpless sound as before.

He buried his face in her neck, wrapping his arms around her as he drove into her, lasting another minute of their bodies knocking together. It occurred to Darcy that this was the first time in years he’d done this.

“Bucky…”

“Fuck, Darce, I’m gonna –”

His hips stalled and he shuddered, holding her tight. Darcy waited, panting along with him as he pulled back, his face sweaty, his eyes hooded. His lips looked so pink and wet as he pushed the hair out of his face with a sigh.

“Sorry, I… fuck,” he muttered.

He pulled out of her, falling onto his back.

Darcy sat up on her elbows, looking around at the damage.

Her clothes were on the bed and the floor, a trail out the door. The air smelled of spit and musk, and stale air, Darcy’s thighs feeling sticky as she realized Bucky’s mess had begun to seep out of her, staining her sheets.

“Shit,” she said out loud, meaning she needed to clean up fast and wash her sheets tomorrow, whenever the fuck she could get the time to…

She glanced over at Bucky, seeing his cock wet and softening against his stomach, his chest still heaving, with his hands covering his face.


	2. ii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> these two need help, honestly
> 
> actually, deadass I need help ❤

_Now it's really clear to me_   
_You could do a little damage, you could cut me deeper_   
_Maybe you're my enemy_   
_Baby, you're my enemy_   
**\- "enemy" by Charli XCX**

**ii.**

Darcy slipped out of bedroom, not waiting for Bucky to acknowledge her.

She wasn’t an idiot. He regretted what just transpired, or at the very least, he was feeling some type of shitty feeling about it. She didn’t want anything to do with that. She didn’t want to exacerbate it with the regular crap – the ‘what are we’ conversation. She didn’t have to hear him say something nice, no siree.

As she went to the bathroom and cleaned up, she smelt his musk mingling with hers between her thighs, felt the warm mess seeping through the toilet paper as she worked quickly, trying to not think too much about this happening again.

So maybe she was pissed off already. He was the one who kissed her first, and then kissed her again, after she mentioned the guy on Tinder she matched with. Unless this somehow had nothing to do with that… Darcy was sick of trying to translate everything he did, try to create context so she could understand every choice he made.

She didn’t want to get caught up in the annoyance, or how her heart began to beat faster when she knew she needed to return to him. She walked back to the bedroom and saw he’d sat up and re-dressed, so she grabbed her pyjamas from under her pillow and pulled them on, avoiding him.

“I should go,” he said eventually, and she made a vague affirming sound.

She picked up her phone and made sure her alarm was set, giving him a sidewards glance as he stood up from the bed, moving closer to her.

“See you.”

“Yeah,” she murmured.

She should have kissed him. She should have grabbed him and made him stay, but she wasn’t brave enough. She berated herself as she heard him walk out, the front door shutting behind him. She chewed her lip, thinking of Jane, and unlocked her phone.

There was a sudden knock and she jumped, her thumb slipping as she was halfway through the explanatory text message to Jane, and she heard:

“Darce?”

He must have forgotten something, but as Darcy made her way down the hallway to the front door, she didn’t see any sign of him having done so. She went to open the front door, and seeing him stare back at her, towering over her as she stood in her stupid pyjamas, she hated the feeling of being this small.

“What’s up?”

“Can I come back?”

“Uh, sure,” she muttered, stepping aside.

He’d been gone only a couple of minutes. She wondered how far he got before he decided to race back. He kept looking at her with a strange look in his eye, scratching the back of his head.

“I did that all wrong, I… I meant to talk.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Darcy said. She swallowed, backtracking. “I mean, I know it’s probably been a while for you, but I’m fine with nothing changing. Shit doesn’t have to get serious. We’re friends.”

“Right,” he said, but he sounded off.

Darcy couldn’t help herself.

“But was it really so bad that you had to walk out like that? After you seemed… sad?” she said.

She walked away, toward the bedroom, feeling tired. She sensed him following her and she sat on the bed, Bucky falling in beside her. Their shoulders brushed and Darcy stared down at their hands, their pinkies almost touching.

“Figured I didn’t make most men cry after sex,” she muttered.

“Don’t say that about yourself,” he said, and she glanced up at him, feeling her face flush.

“It’s a joke.”

“Still,” he said, and his eyes fell to her mouth. “It was me, not you. And any guy that’s cried after you made love –”

Darcy wanted to cringe. She didn’t make love to anyone, period. She fucked. Calling it love-making made her think of softcore 80’s love scenes with flowing curtains and shots of hands joining on silk sheets with heavy panting and surging music…

“- that’s about him, too, not you.”

“So what were you thinking?” Darcy said, her brow lifting. “You seemed… troubled.”

“Made me think about how it’s the first time I’d done it in probably seventy years and it was so rushed and…”

“I liked it,” Darcy said. That wasn’t a lie. It was fun and messy.

“I didn’t want our first time goin’ like that,” Bucky admitted, and his hand moved to rest on her knee, squeezing her gently. “So I’m sorry.”

Darcy didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want this turning into whatever the hell he was wanting it to be, all traditional, boring shit her great-grandparents were probably into. She shifted in her seat, feeling awkward.

“God, it’s not like it was _my_ first time, Bucky,” she mumbled. “Girls these days sorta… get around.”

The first time she had sex, she was relieved because it wasn’t as scary as anyone had made it out to be. Her hymen didn’t break, and it certainly didn’t hurt. It wasn’t mind-blowing, either, but it wasn’t something she lost any sleep over.

“Yeah, I know,” he murmured. “But that was way too fast. And…”

His sentence fell away, but he didn’t stop touching her, just looked down at his hand covering her leg. Darcy waited, hoping he’d find his voice, but instead he drew in a deep breath and let it go, filling the silence between them.

“You can go back to your apartment,” she said, and he looked her in the eye. “I’m gonna sleep. Work tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” he said.

Darcy knew it was better leaving it this way than having him leave earlier and not come back, but she was feeling unsettled, her stomach fluttering when he drew away from her and stood up once more to leave.

He moved toward her at the last second and kissed her forehead, and Darcy didn’t feel like a heroine in a romance novel. Something about it made her feel worse, like it was some type of consolation she didn’t ask for. She didn’t want him feeling sorry for her. Fuck that. She wasn’t waiting for him to break it to her gently, that they couldn’t be more than friends.

She didn’t sleep too well, despite her determination to not turn into a cliché.

-

She didn’t want it to turn into what it did, which was her waiting for him on the roof, waiting for him to show his face in the labs.

She didn’t see him for a week. She took it as a sign that he was trying to push her away, and it bothered her that he thought that would work, like it wasn’t already a long journey in itself to get close enough to call him her friend in the first place. Frankly, it was a little insulting to her intelligence that he thought he could get away with treating her this way.

She hated that her heart began to pound when there was a knock on her door late on the following Friday, and she hated how she hoped it would happen. She’d showered already, and put on fresh lip gloss when she’d finished her dinner.

She flew to the front door, unlatched it and opened it to find Bucky standing there, a little smile on his face.

It killed her, that smile. She figured he had so many reasons not to smile, so in doing so, he was making a distinct choice. She hated that she treasured every one of them she saw.

Maybe she was asking too much of him, because of his past. They were from different generations, and he’d been through so much pain and cruelty. Watering him down to some other guy who’d disappointed her seemed unfair – it’s not like she’d made this any easier for him.

It was easier to not get caught up in it, though, if she could actually manage to do that, but he was making it harder, with how he visibly reacted to her now.

“Hey.”

“Hey, can I… can I come in?” he asked.

Bucky Barnes probably had a different version of a booty call back in the day, when girls were literally disowned for having sex outside of marriage. Darcy wondered all the time about what he thought of her, since she was probably dirty beyond belief compared to those wartime girls, the ones that raced down to the courthouse before seeing their beau naked for the first time.

“Yeah.”

They sat together on the couch, and Darcy put on a movie, anything light she could think of. She knew she wasn’t going to take a lot of it in, because she was so aware of where he was beside her, his arm slung over the back of the couch.

After an hour of not saying anything at all, Darcy’s eyes swivelled to his face, and she tried to study whether he was actually watching the movie, and she couldn’t tell either way.

“Why’d you kiss me the other night?” she asked, and he blinked, his jaw working. “’Cause then you avoided me for days, like you regretted it –”

“I don’t,” he murmured, his eyes swivelling to hers. “I wanted to kiss you.”

“But then you freaked out,” Darcy said, hating her words, hating that she couldn’t keep the attitude out of her voice.

What the fuck did she want from this guy, anyway? Wasn’t it dumb of her to think it would ever be the normal boy-meets-girl type of story? Did she even want that?

“Yeah,” he said, and he seemed sadder. “I’m sorry.”

She wanted to tell him she was fine with it, but she knew she was lying. The other shit was somehow easier, the Dark Elves and having barely enough money to make ends meet, and having to try to put out figurative and literal fires for Jane.

She didn’t want to admit that she was hoping for something, not when she was who she was. Darcy didn’t think she was complete garbage, but maybe telling herself she had no right to be fussy when it came to dating was about her lingering issues with self-esteem. It was better to avoid that shit anyway, when it made her act like an idiot, like she was now.

He moved to kiss her, his hand coming up to grip her jaw as their mouths slanted together.

He pushed her further into the couch, and he was wrapping her legs around his middle, going in for more kisses, his touch purposeful and significantly more sober than last time.

Open-mouthed kisses, and Darcy couldn’t stop herself from moaning, he was a really good kisser. His intentions were clear, he wanted her breathless and properly tasted.

He pulled back, taking the bulk of his keys and wallet out of his jeans pockets, and he chuckled, the sound so beautiful to Darcy that she smiled up at him, hoping to encourage him.

“I’ll be with you in a sec,” he murmured, and he dived back in for more, and Darcy was reaching for him in turn, her fingers in his hair.

They laughed into it, his tongue plying her lips open with a tenderness she wasn’t fully prepared for. The silence that was filled with the soft sounds of their kissing, was taut with something Darcy found herself pushing against, something she’d felt when he touched her the first time last week, when it all felt like too much, and her brain and body were somehow mismatched in the struggle to keep up.

Having sex on the couch felt more intimate, more significant than the first time on the bed. He pulled off her clothes, chased her mouth with his, and they were completely silent when he first pushed inside her, cradling her in his lap.

He made a sound against her mouth, like a strangled sound he didn’t mean to make, and Darcy’s chest hurt with it. It was terrifying, that he chose her, of all people. 

Much later, he was watching her, sharing her pillow, their heads close as they lay on their sides. His knuckles stroked her face.

-

He stopped being gentle pretty quickly. Darcy thought about how it’d been some time, several decades if his calculation was indeed correct, and maybe that was why he was suddenly hungry for her like no-one else had been before.

The third time they had sex, he cornered her in the kitchen, turning her so her hips were pressed into the counter, nipping at the skin of her neck as he made quick work of his jeans and her sweatpants.

He was rough. There was no other way to describe it. He took from her and she held on for dear life, eyes slamming shut as she came around him and he followed soon after with a groan, knocking the air out of her.

When they separated, swaying and panting, Bucky tucked himself away and then sunk to the floor, eyes shutting as Darcy pulled her pants back up, trying to catch her breath.

“You okay?”

He nodded, passing a hand over his face. He blinked at her as she dropped to her knees beside him, so they were at eye level with each other.

He’d more or less pounced on top of her when she was getting a glass of water from the pitcher she kept in the fridge. She was a little confused, but not upset.

“That was fun,” she said, giving a little smile. “Right?”

“Yeah,” he said, but he didn’t smile back. He frowned a little, and there was sweat on his face. “I… uh, I didn’t hurt you?”

“No,” she said. “I liked it.”

“Oh.”

She went to clean up.

-

He slept over for the first time after she blew him on the couch. She’d never get over how he seemed to lose control of himself when her mouth was on him. It was addictive, drawing the sounds out of him with his hand deep in her hair, the other clutching the arm of the couch.

His toes curled when he came, and she swallowed it down, panting along with him as she stood up, wiping her mouth.

She found herself patting herself on the back for it, getting this handsome guy to come undone, boneless and sweaty when he was spent and slumped over.

He slept with his flesh arm wrapped around her middle, and Darcy realized he was spooning her, or trying to, without really asking her.

She never really liked sharing her bed, if she was honest. She couldn’t spread out… and she hated the feeling of her feet being touched with someone else’s. She wasn’t a cuddly person.

Except she found herself shifting, backing into him, placing her hand over his over her stomach, feeling his breath on the back of her neck.

-

“Are you guys dating?” Jane said, when Darcy told her about the sleepover.

“I guess so,” Darcy said, hoping she didn’t sound as giddy as she felt.

He made her crazy, stupid happy. A part of her wanted to roll her eyes at herself at call it so ridiculous. Just because a guy was having sex with her did not mean he liked her. And yet she couldn’t push aside the hope that he was interested in her.

“If he’s using me, it’s not like I’m not benefiting,” Darcy said, with a little shrug.

Jane had a look on her face that Darcy ignored, pretending she wasn’t being judged. Sure, she could tell him how she felt, but it was dumb at the same time. It was all dumb, dating.

It made her think of her parents too much. She didn’t want to buy into that unrealistic idea of love. One person for one other person, for their whole lives? That was stupid, and wrong.

“Eventually, he’ll be the guy I tell my grandkids about,” she joked, avoiding Jane’s gaze. “‘Nana Lewis, tell us about the time you used to bang James ‘Bucky’ Barnes on every surface of your apartment back in your twenties…’”

“If he ever stopped coming around, you’d never forgive him,” Jane said, and Darcy shot her a glance, narrowing her eyes.

“You don’t have to be so smug,” she retorted. “You’d figure being so smart would grant you the wisdom to read a room for once, Jane.”

Jane tutted, leaving her be. Darcy was irritable for the rest of the day, hating that Jane was inside her head when Bucky came by like always.

When he moved in to kiss her, Darcy went still, and he mimicked her, his face falling.

“You okay?”

“What are we?” she blurted, feeling her face flush.

“What?”

“What… are we, Bucky?” she said. “I don’t want to be some dumb… girl about this, but – but I like you. I like-like you. Jesus –”

She rolled her eyes at herself.

“- I hate this shit.”

She peeled away from him, pulling her shirt back up that he’d pushed down to kiss her neck, and she stood up, folding her arms.

“I fucked it up, okay? So you can go. I won’t be mad at you.”

Bucky stared at her for several seconds, a deep frown forming.

“That took you no time at all to decide,” he murmured.

“What? It’s not like I’m…”

She shrugged, feeling awkward. It was so obvious to her that if he took a second to look around, he could get any woman. So much about him fucking her bothered her, but if she got into it, she was afraid she’d actually cry.

Her voice had begun to wobble and she couldn’t look at him, her eyes stinging.

“Darce.”

“No,” she said, glancing away. “I’m… I’m not doing this. I’m going to bed.”

“Wait a fuckin’ second,” he snapped, and she went still, bristling.

“What?”

“I like you, too,” he said, standing up. He looked almost fierce with it. “I like everything about you.”

He moved toward her, pulling her into his chest, and kissed her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [my Tumblr](http://grimeysociety.tumblr.com/)


	3. iii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this for me, so... you know it's going to be a roller coaster. ❤ 
> 
> P.S. in this universe Bucky didn't kill Tony's parents.

_Don't worry 'bout me, I'll get along_   
_Forget about me, be happy my love_   
**\- "Don't Worry 'Bout Me" by Frank Sinatra**

_Flow sweetly hang heavy_   
_You suddenly complete me_   
_You suddenly complete me_   
**\- "Hysteric" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs**

**iii.**

Darcy knew it was before her alarm was meant to go off when she stirred under Bucky’s touch. He drew in a deep breath, stretching her arms and legs, feeling his lips brush her cheek.

“You awake?”

“I am now,” she replied, though she couldn’t be mad at him if she tried.

She turned onto her back, his hand slipping over her tummy to grip her hip, his nose brushing hers. He had that intent in his eye, moving back a little, Darcy’s sleep shorts tugged down.

“I can’t sleep,” he whispered.

She began to laugh breathlessly, quickly turning it into a moan as his mouth sealed over her clit. Darcy’s hand reached for the back of his head, her fingers threading through his hair to latch onto him, her hips beginning to lift, feeling herself growing needier under his capable touch.

“I’m happy to be a help,” she gasped.

She was told over and over again, men take work. Relationships are work. She couldn’t agree, not with the articles she saw online or with anything Jane had said over the last several months. It was the happiest she’d ever been, and it was ridiculous to think this was meant to be some time of struggle. It was easy, simple. If dating could be like _this_ – Darcy had been wrong for years about how dumb it was.

She reminded herself that she was probably lucky. Her parents ended up resenting each other more than they ever loved one another. Jane was always on and off with Thor, never really over him and there was always angst when he was mentioned, which was inescapable.

Sure, Darcy knew her circumstances were unusual. Her boyfriend was a hundred years-old, a former soldier and had specific needs, but she was happy with him. There wasn’t a lot she would change. She didn’t like thinking about that stuff, anyway. It never helped anyone, being unrealistic or fussy in a relationship. It was about compromise, right? Darcy couldn’t have everything absolutely perfect. She’d probably get bored.

He hardly ever let her come over to his place. He’d say it was a mess, or not quite ready, when he’d been living there for months and had so little to unpack anyway. His excuses never felt adequate, but Darcy knew not to push. She felt as though that was useless. He went quiet when he didn’t want to talk about something, and she hated him going silent around her unless he was blissed out from sex or sleeping. She didn’t want anything to complicate things like her wanting to see his equally tiny apartment, with so little inside it.

“It’s the honeymoon period,” Jane said, six months in. “For Thor and me, that never happened.”

“We’re not like you and Thor,” Darcy retorted, trying to not sound grumpy, but it really wasn’t worth Jane’s time comparing anyone to her relationship.

“Right, I forgot, you guys are perfect,” Jane muttered, stabbing a piece of romaine lettuce and chewing it a second later. “You’re so cute I wanna strangle you.”

Darcy smirked, picking her sandwich up to take a bite. She chewed carefully, not meaning to seem smug like she always was in her head. She wanted to tell everyone how happy she was all the time. She wanted to bring Bucky up just so she could say his name. She was disgustingly in love, and she knew everyone else knew it, too.

Darcy dismissed Jane at first, at least, inwardly. On the outside, she agreed a little:

“I’ll probably be bitching about him sooner or later.”

She didn’t think so. She didn’t know how to tell people just how lucky she felt – because, wasn’t that a little pathetic, that she felt more valuable because someone like Bucky was her boyfriend?

He didn’t make it seem like things would change, but it was when the holidays came around and Darcy knew she had to go visit her mom, and she made a point of telling Bucky just how awful the experience would be if he came along, too.

They were sitting on the couch, almost a year after they’d first hooked up, her feet in his lap as she explained how she’d be going away for a night and she’d rather not expose him to that particular torture.

“I get it,” he said, and she was surprised. “You don’t particularly like your family.”

It was typical of Bucky, to state something so concisely with little effort. He seemed to understand things so easily that it made Darcy pause. He was sharper than he often let on, but something about his reaction felt off.

They went to bed like usual an hour later, but Darcy stared at the ceiling in the dark, unable to close her eyes. She didn’t fall asleep for a while, hearing Bucky’s steady breath, knowing he was also awake.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, trying to keep her snippiness inside.

Why was she annoyed? She didn’t want him to come, which was precisely why she told him not to. She had no right to be upset, for this dumb, unknown reason. She was lying to him, but it wasn’t a big lie. People lie all the time, and it was to spare them from a stupid argument.

When she visited her mom and stepfather, it was exactly as Darcy expected it to be. Everything felt obligatory and awkward. Her mom was not maternal, and very selfish and loud. Darcy felt for her stepfather, this man she hardly knew whose two daughters seemed closer to Darcy’s own kin than she could ever hope to be. It felt as though Darcy was only there because she was expected to be part of this woman’s life, despite how little either of them seemed to get out of it.

Darcy couldn’t get through one whole day without texting Jane about it, avoiding Bucky’s text, wishing there was some way she could get drunk without anyone saying anything about it.

She couldn’t relate to either her mom or her stepfather. Their lives were so vastly different, and Darcy couldn’t bother to try to make her mom understand her unique situation. Talking about Bucky just made her feel defensive and weird.

“What does he do?”

“He’s, well, he’s part of a crew that goes on missions –”

She kept thinking about the unlikelihood of her having anything in common with him, with anyone she’d ever known. It felt as though wherever Darcy went, she felt like some type of outsider, but that wasn’t necessarily the world’s fault.

When she returned to the city the next day, she felt agitated. She went straight to her fridge, seeing Bucky on the couch watching football or something else, and she poured herself a shot of vodka and threw it back.

“Starting early,” Bucky murmured, smirking.

“I don’t need you judging me right now,” she snapped, and his face fell.

She went over to him, sighing a little. She tilted his head toward hers with her finger under his chin, and kissed him lightly on the lips.

“Sorry.”

“S’okay,” he murmured. “How bad was it?”

Darcy closed her eyes as she sat down beside him, leaning her head against his shoulder.

“I wish you’d come.”

“You didn’t want me to,” Bucky said.

“I wish you’d asked,” Darcy amended, pulling away to look him in the eye. “Do you get that? I wanted you to try to invite yourself, because boyfriends are meant to meet parents.”

“You told me not to,” Bucky said, a frown forming. “You told me your mom’s an asshole, and your dad’s just as bad. You told me it was _torture_.”

It struck Darcy then that she shouldn’t have used that word to describe the ordeal, since Bucky had been in captivity for decades, literally tortured into submission time and time again.

Darcy groaned softly. “Shit. I’m sorry –”

“What are you apologizing for? What the hell is goin’ on?” Bucky said, his voice softer.

He took her hand and squeezed it.

“Sweetheart.”

“You’re right, I hate my family,” she admitted. “And… and I wish you’d have made more of an effort, and I wish… I wish you never meet my mom at the same time. Because then you’d know why I am the way I am.”

She met his eye again, feeling exposed.

“Or worse, you’ll see how much I’m like her, and you’d find a reason not see me the same way anymore.”

“What?”

It all sounded so stupid and contrived. Darcy wished she’d hadn’t said a word.

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it,” she said, taking her hand away. “I’m just being dumb.”

She kissed him on the lips.

“How was your weekend?”

-

Something seemed to shake loose after then, like that weekend was something Darcy should have taken as a sign. She shoved the feelings deeper down inside like she always did, laughing through it all with a roll of her eyes.

Bucky still didn’t invite her to his place. One week, they were eating pizza for the third night in a row, the cardboard boxes their own little continent in Darcy’s kitchen. She meant to throw them out, they both did, but they kept putting it off.

“You think about what you’ll do after this?” Darcy asked, her eyes falling to the mess that was her apartment.

There was something about that day that started off badly to begin with. Jane snapped at her and an intern spilt coffee on her Vans, which she’d cleaned and was currently drying on the balcony. She needed to bring them in tonight or they might get snowed on before morning, but she was preoccupied with how Bucky didn’t seem to have an issue with anything around him, as if the chaos was expected.

“Probably eat some ice cream,” Bucky said, mouth full.

He hadn’t spoken about Christmas, and any time she brought it up, he seemed to show no enthusiasm, not even for their own little Christmas they could have together.

“No, I mean,” Darcy swallowed her mouthful and licked her lips. “I mean, do you ever think about the future?”

“You mean like flyin’ cars?” Bucky replied, and Darcy frowned at him, a little irritated that he wasn’t reading this as an attempt at a serious conversation.

“Are you serious?”

“What,” he said, and his face fell at the sight of her annoyance. “What, it’s the last thing I did before I was shipped off. Me and Steve went to the Stark thing, and –”

He cut himself off abruptly, seeming to cave in on himself. He put his slice down, going silent. Darcy watched as he sucked a thumb, a shadow passing over his face.

“Buck.”

“It’s fine,” he said, his voice hollow.

“You can talk to me about it,” Darcy said. “You should talk to me about it. I’m your girlfriend.”

He changed more as she spoke, and Darcy’s guts twisted, but she smiled at him, trying to be hopeful and happy to hear.

“Buck.”

She rubbed his metal arm, moving closer to kiss his face, still smiling at him, hoping to coax him out. He looked straight at her, his face like stone.

“You look like a damn fool smilin’ at me like that.”

Darcy recoiled like she’d been burned, feeling his spite hit her on the nose, and she put her plate aside. She was up from her seat and retreating down the hallway, shutting the bathroom door behind her.

“Darce. Darcy!”

She heard him calling after her but she felt herself detaching from her body, a numbness taking over her. She walked up to the mirror and turned on the faucet, not knowing what she was doing. She’d locked the door, she must have, because he was trying to open it. He began to knock on the door, pleading.

“Darcy. Honey, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please open the door. I didn’t mean it, I’m so sorry. Please, Darcy. Please open the door.”

She listened, feeling somewhat absent from the anguish she could hear in his tone. She looked at herself in the mirror, before ducking down to wash her face with the cold water. She shut off the faucet and saw her hands were starting to shake as she grabbed a towel to dry herself.

It was the worst thing he’d ever said to her.

She watched, with the same absence as before, as Bucky tried the doorknob again, as she attempted to reconcile with what she’d just witnessed, but every explanation was coming up short.

She opened the door, and he went still at the sight of her, his throat bobbing.

“Darce…”

She knew he wasn’t perfect. No-one was, but she hoped he wasn’t like everyone else, so keen to hurt her feelings just because they could.

She moved past him, slipping into the kitchen to pick up the empty pizza boxes. She walked out into the hallway, shoving them down the garbage chute, before coming back inside for more. Bucky sprang into action, helping her. The silence between them was an odd comfort to her, and she was glad for once that he didn’t have the courage to speak.

Later, when the kitchen was the closest thing to pristine in weeks, the dishwater going while the scent of disinfectant still lingered on the bench, Darcy went to the freezer and took out the carton of Neapolitan ice cream and then retrieved two spoons from the drawer.

She pulled up her stool and sat down, Bucky hesitating as she began to eat straight from the container in silence. She turned her head toward him, their eyes meeting.

He sunk into the stool beside her and the conversation was never picked up again.

-

For several weeks, they moved together in a peacefulness that Darcy hadn’t imagined. Bucky was good. He was so good that she almost forgot what he said with her, telling herself it was a moment of grumpiness. In which case, she’d got off lightly.

She didn’t bring it up, and so he didn’t, either.

Then he slept over one night and Darcy felt like the earth could swallow her whole.

He tended to sleep lightly, sometimes not at all, getting up to watch TV between midnight and breakfast. Darcy liked that he didn’t make it her problem that he couldn’t sleep, though the sex was good when he tried to fuck her until they were both worn out.

She probably took the peace for granted, because when he was ripped from her dream by his frantic yelling, she didn’t know what was happening for a good minute, forgetting that he did this often enough in his own bed.

He was fighting something off deep in his memories, and Darcy couldn’t fight them for him, she just had to try to wake him up and bring him back to the present, her hands on his arms as she tried to shake him.

“Bucky. Bucky, honey, it’s me, you’re okay –”

He was yelling and thrashing, and then he was blinking up at her, panting like he’d been running, the silence that settled between them taut with fear and astonishment.

“M’sorry,” he mumbled, and he began to cry, and she couldn’t bear it, the way he crumpled and tried to hide from her.

She kissed him, kept kissing him and trying to pet his hair, her hands never settling for long, and then he was moving up, taking hold of her and sucking the breath out of her in a desperate kiss.

She was pinned to the mattress as he tore off her underwear, licking his palm to wet it, stroking himself as he rid Darcy of the rest of her clothes, tucking himself inside her with a whimper he bit back, Darcy’s chest tight as he moved hard and fast.

It hurt but she couldn’t speak. He needed this, and she didn’t know what else to do, so she lay there as he used her body for only a minute before he crashed, sighing:

“Oh, God…”

He sounded almost relieved, like he didn’t think he could come, like he’d done it to prove he was still alive, and that he had choices still. Darcy felt the sob rising in her throat as she slipped out from under him, feeling his mess trickling down her thigh.

She cupped herself and moved out, not before she heard:

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” she breathed, another lie.

She managed to reach the bathroom before she began to cry, snatching the towel from the rack to smother her sobs as she sunk to the floor.

She wasn’t afraid of Bucky, or of his mental illness. She was afraid of how useless she was to him, because she didn’t seem to be enough to push him into trying to get better. She’d tried for months to gently coax him to unfurl that part of him, to let her in.

She wasn’t enough, clearly. If she was, he’d be motivated to try, but she’d let him behave however she wanted because she loved him.

She didn’t know if he heard her crying, but when she went to bed a few minutes later, her body aching, her privates stinging, she lay down beside him with her back to his, and she squeezed her eyes shut, vowing to not let this happen again.

-

“Does he… I mean, does he talk to _you_?” she asked.

She met Sam in secret, at a café down the street from the Tower. She came here to get ice coffees some afternoons when Jane was especially erratic.

“Sometimes,” Sam said, watching Darcy. “Does he know you’re worried?”

Darcy swallowed, feeling ashamed.

“No, I mean… he’d probably be able to tell.”

“You should talk to him.”

“And tell him what, exactly?” she threw back. “I’m not qualified. I’m barely an adult – it’s like I’m incapable of being a whole person at the best of times –”

“Darcy, that’s not true. You’re great at your job,” Sam said, and she felt her cheeks heat. “You’re beautiful, and smart. And… God, you’re so funny and such a pain in the ass.”

Darcy met his eye, scoffing. “You’d know.”

“Y’know, I would,” Sam agreed, smiling, and Darcy couldn’t help doing the same, Sam was infectious that way. “You remind me of my sister.”

His smile faltered a little as Darcy rubbed her eye, looking away.

“He talk to Steve, either?”

“Sometimes,” Sam said.

That only discouraged her. She knew Steve’s concern sometimes drove Bucky up the wall. His positive attitude he tried to have rubbed Darcy the wrong way sometimes, too. She knew the alternative was far worse, but it was harder to preach that to Bucky, especially when she got little to no response.

The last time she really tried to push him, Bucky didn’t say a word. It began with a gentleness Darcy felt she’d perfected over the last several months, then it dissolved into her frustrated, tired, true self.

“Or don’t,” she said eventually, her arms wide. She let them fall to her sides and she sighed. “It’s not like I can make you.”

She hated the language of the non-fight, since it was so one-sided. She’d gone through two birthdays of his, knowing he hated celebrating because it reminded him of the past too much.

He said tersely when she offered they get a cake to share with friends:

“What’s the point? I’ll be shakin’ like a leaf the whole time.”

Darcy knew he was in pain. It bothered her that he didn’t acknowledge her efforts to make him feel seen and heard. He hated crowds, hated fun of nearly every kind, rarely ever wanted to leave the Tower unless it was absolutely necessary.

“But I’ll be there.”

“So why don’t we just stay in?” Bucky said, crossing his arms.

“Why don’t you get help?”

Looking back on it, she knew it was a poor way to approach it. She knew no-one could truly know what he went through, and that no pain she’d ever known would come close, but she wanted to try, and he wasn’t letting her.

The rant went on and on, at first it made sense. She was sure she was making good arguments. He’d feel better overall, talking to someone. He’d be able to let out some of the troubles, unload it or at least have someone tell him something comforting, and they’d be qualified, unlike her.

“Or don’t.”

She said it because he hadn’t said a word, she may as well have been talking to herself. After that night, she had to be honest to herself.

He was choosing to not get help. He wasn’t an idiot, he wasn’t avoiding it because he was trying to spare her feelings. Whichever way she tried to twist it, it came back to the same issue. He was choosing to stick his head in the sand and never change. He’d rather fuck her than fight, and she used to think the same thing, but it wasn’t fun anymore.

She couldn’t ignore how heavy her heart felt when she was alone, like knowing she wasn’t able to make him change was literally weighing her down. Her body ached, and one morning a few days after their non-fight, she lay on the couch and called in sick, but said nothing to Bucky about it when he left her to go train.

He didn’t know about it until lunchtime when he came by, kneeling by her as she stared at her TV, his lips pressing to her forehead as he brushed away the hair from her face.

“You feelin’ okay?” he asked.

She didn’t look at him. “Nah.”

She didn’t offer an explanation. She was tired, and hoping that if she was away from him for a few hours he’d be contrite, but instead he just sounded worried about her.

Maybe if she was a SHIELD agent, he’d do as she suggested. Maybe if they had some shared life experience, he’d find her advice credible enough.

Darcy never knew she could be this cold.

“I just wanna be alone,” she mumbled.

He left her without another word, simply kissed her forehead once more before he rose to go. Darcy watched him, saw his metal hand flex, the plates softly whirring as he disappeared into the hallway. When he shut the front door, she began to cry.

-

She knew she couldn’t be without him, but she sensed something growing between them, a wall of sorts. Maybe it was better to describe it as a cancer, reaching the edges of them both, clawing at Darcy’s insides as she struggled to move through the world.

They’d fuck and then not say anything for long stretches of time. Darcy stopped feeling the urge to fill each silence with her incessant, stupid little words. She was growing tired of herself, tired of this person she was to Bucky. She couldn’t quite believe she’d got this far in life being this version of herself, someone who let themselves be treated like this.

“Darce.”

He murmured it one night when he knew she was awake and pretending otherwise. She moved to switch on her lamp, squinting at him as her eyes adjusted.

“What, what is it?”

She hadn’t seen him like this before. She tried to read his face and felt her heart sink like a stone, her throat feeling thick when she found where he was going before he’d said another word.

“No…”

“We have to have it out, sweetheart.”

“No, no we don’t,” Darcy said, scrubbing her face. “It’s the middle of the night. We’ll – we’ll feel better in the morning, we’ll be better to talk later, when I can think straight –”

“You _are_ thinkin’ straight –”

“What is wrong with you?” Darcy snapped, unable to stop herself.

She sat on her knees as she said this, and Bucky drew in a breath, looking away as he considered his words.

“A lot. A lot is wrong with me.”

“Then – then why – why…?”

Her breath was coming in little spurts, and she felt sick with it, the way everything was unraveling so fast right in front of her.

“I can’t,” he said, his voice so much calmer than hers. “I can’t get outta this, okay?”

She shut her eyes, feeling the tears begin to fall.

“It’s gotta be you, sweetheart.”

“I love you,” she said, moving toward him, but he caught her hands before she could reach him, keeping her just far enough away from him so she couldn’t hold him, or try to kiss him. “Bucky, you can’t just… die.”

“Listen, it’s not – it’s not what you think,” he said, and Darcy whimpered. “There’s… there’s nothin’ there, okay? There’s nothin’ there. And you could meet someone who’d make you happy.”

“ _You_ make me happy,” she breathed, feeling like her chest could cave in.

“I used to,” he said. “Then… then I stopped lying to myself.”

She wished she knew when it’d fractured beyond repair for him. She knew what he was doing – pushing her away to spare her from more pain, but this hurt anyway, knowing he did love her. He absolutely loved her – she saw it in his smile and felt it in his touch, even now, his hands holding her wrists.

“Please don’t do this,” she sobbed, not caring that she sounded like a wreck, because she was. She thought she might start screaming, but her voice was wobbling too much. “Please, I love you…”

“There’s nothin’ there,” he said, and he let go of her, pulling away completely.

She watched as he picked up his things, redressed and left her there, crying in her bed.

She didn’t go to work the next day. She didn’t know how to explain to anyone what had happened, but she knew she had failed in so many ways, over years and years, and this was further proof that she wasn’t able to hold onto anything worthwhile.

She picked up her phone around lunchtime, sniffling as she dialed his number. She went to Voicemail, and she spoke without taking a breath, staring out the window.

“Never speak to me ever again. I never wanna see you again. Goodbye.”

-

Jane confessed she’d only stayed in the city because Darcy had Bucky, and since they were over, maybe they could uproot. Darcy didn’t want to stay, either.

As impossible and as sad as it seemed, she needed to have a life outside of the Avengers, and being in New York wouldn’t help her move on.

Jane went one step further and took another job in Norway, so Darcy could say she left the country to get away from Bucky Barnes.

-

For a long time, all she did was hurt. She kept her head down and worked. She learned little more Norwegian than she already knew. It wasn’t much more than how to ask for a drink at a bar, a tiny little tavern at the bottom of the hill in the tiny town whose conservatory she and Jane lived in.

It got a little easier when she was away from the US, because the problems she had felt smaller, and somehow the world felt larger.

They were there almost two years, until one afternoon when they saw alien ships come down in Africa, and Darcy’s heart was in her throat, thinking of everyone over there, all her old friends fighting for her when she never asked them to.

Before she left for Norway, she spoke to Steve. He was walking through the lobby and she was heading in the other direction, on her way to post something to her mom, the last of a few things she intended to keep behind when she moved. She’d be taking the plane the next day.

He stopped mid-step, lighting up when he recognized her among the sea of grey suits and black tac gear of other SHIELD personnel. She and Steve stuck out, wearing their ordinary civilian clothes on a Wednesday afternoon.

“Lewis.”

“Steve,” she said, nodding.

“Headin’ out?” he said, and she nodded.

“Well. A few things to tie up.”

“Can’t believe we’re losin’ you… _again_ ,” he said, smiling down at her.

“Yeah, God,” she said, feeling the heat in her cheeks rise. “Can’t seem to stay still.”

There was a pause, filled with things left unsaid. He was her ex’s best friend, both of them unlike anyone Darcy had ever known.

“I mean, they’ve got universal healthcare,” Darcy said, putting up a hand, the one that wasn’t holding her bag. “And there’s less traffic in the town we’re moving to.”

“But it doesn’t have me,” Steve said with a little smile, and Darcy nodded.

“That’s true.”

She looked at the sea of people walking back and forth, and she drew in a breath.

“I’ll miss you,” Steve said, and she glanced back at him, seeing his jaw tense.

She launched herself at him, dropping her bag. He clung her tight, lifting her feet off the floor. He kissed her cheek, stroking her hair.

“Don’t be a stranger, okay?” he murmured. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” Darcy whispered, feeling weaker. “God, what you must think of me...”

“He’s gonna be okay, Darce.”

So two years later, it was impossible to not watch the TV in horror that afternoon the world began to fall apart once more. She knew if there was any other-worldly trouble, Thor was involved, too, so Jane wasn’t about to go work, no matter how dire it seemed only moments before.

The TV feed cut abruptly and Jane actually cried out loud in horror, turning to Darcy, whose phone was already unlocked as she frantically tried to find some explanation on Twitter, if somehow someone else knew what the hell was going on in Wakanda.

“Darcy…”

Jane’s voice had changed.

“What?”

Darcy glanced up from her phone, seeing Jane sway on the spot, the color draining from her face. She took hold of her shoulder to support her.

“Jane. Janey!”

“I feel…”

Darcy felt light-headed as well, looking around. Had they both got sick? She felt as though she was slipping away, like into a dream, but she was meant to be upright, she wasn’t meant to be sleeping…

-

Darcy gulped the air, sitting up.

“Ah, what the fuck!”

Her lungs filled with dust and she coughed, turning around, seeing the lab looked as though someone that left the doors wide open during a sandstorm. She saw Jane beside her, similarly affected, coughing into her first.

Darcy’s chest rattled as she reached for her hand, squeezing it.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know, last thing I remembered, I felt like I was gonna pass out…”

“Me, too,” Jane replied, standing up, pulling Darcy up with her.

They walked around the lab, pressing buttons and seeing no machines come to life.

“Is the power out?” Darcy asked.

“Darcy.”

Her head whipped toward Jane, who was standing by the window. Her eyes widened at what she found.

The grass outside was overgrown, and it was clear that time had passed, more than a few minutes of them being unconscious.

“What… happened?” Jane said again, sounding terrified.

Darcy couldn’t stop the bile from rising.

-

Five years. Five whole years she’d been gone, as far as the locals could tell them in broken English. It took a few tries for Darcy and Jane to believe them, but they weren’t the only ones to reappear that day. The tavern’s owner had woken in the backroom and almost gave his wife a heart attack when he burst through, thinking he’d only gone to rig a fresh keg minutes earlier.

Darcy kept looking Jane’s way when they went to their local medical center two towns over for a check-up. She reached for her hand again and again, afraid this was a strange dream.

“I’m here,” Darcy said, choosing to act as if she wasn’t as afraid as she truly was.

“Should we call New York?” Jane asked.

Darcy bit her lip. “Probably. They might be able to explain.”

It turned out half the population had vanished from the whole universe, and for five years the people left behind had tried to rebuild. They gathered these little pieces of information over the next few hours, realizations following in turn.

“I’m… thirty-eight?” Jane said. “Right?”

Darcy shrugged. It meant she was thirty-two. She’d missed the perils that came with turning thirty, and yet she knew her mind and body couldn’t possibly be that age. She thought of Steve and Bucky, and how they’d been robbed of decades due to ice or cryostasis.

Thinking of Bucky, every time, over the last few hours, felt like a blow to the chest.

She called New York, hoping someone would pick up. She managed to get hold of someone called Scott Lang, whose name did not ring a bell.

“This is Darcy Lewis. Is… is Steve there?”

“Darcy?” Scott repeated. “You’re on a list somewhere, I think I saw your file. We were – we were keeping you guys in a pile.”

“Why?” Darcy asked.

“It was meant to remind us who we were doing this all for.”

“Where’s Bucky?” she asked, the panic rising up in her. “Where’s Bucky Barnes?”

-

It took days to get back to the US. Plane tickets were selling out as people scrambled to get home, to reunite with those who dusted. Darcy was part of that distinct half – they called it the Blip, what Thanos did to the universe. All he had to do was snap his fingers, and then Steve went back in time with a handful of others to save them all.

Tony Stark was dead. Darcy couldn’t keep it in when she found that out. She hadn’t been that close to him for the last couple of years while she was in Norway, but he’d always made her feel at home when she was in the Tower.

She remembered the first time he spoke to her, when she complained to him about the amount of foot traffic through the labs, particularly in front of her desk.

“I work in the labs,” she said, when she walked straight up to him in the break room.

He was pouring himself a coffee and glanced her way, not seeming too interested, and then he paused at the sight of her hands on her hips.

“Good for you.”

“Well, I mean to say that I need people to not use my desk as a detour for getting to their station,” she said. He finally looked her in the eye and she rose her brows pointedly. “It’s not LaGuardia.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I should have my own office,” she said. “Your name’s on the building.”

“And your name is – I wanna say… Nancy?”

“Darcy,” she said, and his mouth spread into a smile, which told her he already knew her name and was just teasing her.

“Of course.”

Since that day, he frequently butted heads with her and Jane, but over time he called her ‘kiddo’ and got her that office she whined about. It was cramped and lit badly, but it was still her own space.

She knew she had to go to his funeral, which was held a week after she woke up with Jane. When they arrived on American soil once more, the plane cheered, but Darcy and Jane couldn’t share their joy.

They hired a car and drove to Tony’s family home, following the other cars that seemed on their way to the same place. Darcy and Jane didn’t talk for hours, Darcy’s stomach in knots.

“I can’t believe he had a daughter,” Jane whispered, turning the blinker on.

“I can’t believe any of this,” Darcy replied, putting her chin in her hand as she stared out the window.

Everything seemed greener. She kept seeing people bursting into happy tears at the airport, and she was spared from her parents missing her, since they’d dusted as well, but she wasn’t keen to see anyone. It felt wrong to feel any relief at all.

It was hard to not feel as if the world could stop at any point. Nothing was impossible anymore.

“Time travel?” Jane repeated.

Bruce Banner was now taller than seven feet, larger and greener than the last time they saw him. He was a cross between his more human self and his Hulk persona. Darcy knew it was okay to look him in the eye, but it was still bizarre, conversing with someone who looked like the Hulk but spoke like her old lab friend Bruce, the guy she’d call ‘Doc’ and bring cups of green tea.

“Yeah. That’s how we did it,” he said.

Darcy kept looking around, distracted. The wake was full of old faces, many of them streaked with tears. She hadn’t seen Bucky yet. She wondered if she should go looking for him. She didn’t know what she’d say. Even if she turned back the clock five years, they’d been broken up for two by then. She was compelled to at least look at him, even if it was across a room, just to see him standing there, alive.

“Darcy.”

She felt a hand on her arm and she looked up, seeing Steve.

“Oh, my God,” she breathed, and he pulled her into a hug. “Steve.”

He looked older, and yet still the same. If the stories were true, he’d been the last one standing before everyone was brought back. Darcy knew that was just like him, the self-sacrificing bastard that he was.

“Look at you,” he murmured, and she felt tears spring in her eyes as he hugged her again.

“Where is he?” she whispered, when they broke apart.

“He left with Sam, right after.”

She needed to see him. She didn’t know when she would, but sooner had to be better than later.

“You headin’ back to Europe?” Steve asked.

They were standing under a tree, just the two of them. Darcy turned her head to see his eyes staring back down at her again.

“No, I’m staying for good.”

“Okay.”

Without a word, they joined hands and she squeezed his, taking a deep breath.

“I gotta take back the Stones,” Steve said, and she stared at him, feeling her throat tighten.

Bruce had given her a little rundown of how Thanos managed to destroy half of life in the entire universe. She knew one of the Stones was the Aether that Jane had encountered years ago, a whole lifetime ago.

“You don’t need to say it,” he added.

“I won’t, then,” she whispered, squeezing his hand again.

_Be safe. Come back in one piece._

-

She and Jane stayed in the facility upstate, beginning the long process of building things back together again. There were some new faces, like Peter Parker, the teenager from Queens Darcy remembered from Tony’s wake.

There were others Darcy hadn’t expected, like the raccoon called Rocket or the woman named Mantis… at least, Darcy thought they were a woman. She was from another planet. There wasn’t a lot anymore that she should be surprised by, and yet…

Thor and Jane had several heart-to-heart conversations before he took off again with Rocket and the other Guardians. When she asked her about it, Jane didn’t offer Darcy much of an explanation, but it was clear that she wasn’t going to stop feeling the way she did about Thor, time never seemed to diminish it.

“What about Thor?”

“He’s busy,” Jane said, with a shrug of her tiny shoulder. “And I’m busy, too. But he’ll be back.”

Darcy nodded. She enjoyed her last hug with him, her eyes misting.

She hadn’t spoken to Bucky. She thought she saw him the distance one morning, but she hadn’t run after him. And it turned out to be some random construction guy anyway, wearing his hair in a top bun, which Bucky never did.

-

Steve returned without the Stones, Natasha at his side. Darcy heard about it second-hand, and there were more happy tears, the world spinning, when the news broke that he’d managed to get her back from Vormir.

-

It was six weeks into their rebuilding of the Avengers facility when she finally saw Bucky again. She was walking down the hill, seeing the new grass growing in the morning sun as she descended to the worksite, a spring in her step as she thought of all the progress they could make today.

She gave Bruce a little wave as she stepped into the makeshift office she shared with Jane, seeing her boss was already there and sipping her coffee.

“He’s here.”

“Hmm?” Darcy said, distracted. She was reaching for her own mug, pouring coffee as she heard the men working close-by, yelling at one another over the machinery. “Who?”

There was a soft creak and she glanced over at the doorway, seeing Bucky standing there.

“Hey, Darcy,” he said.

His hair was all cut off. He looked older, more lines on his face, but he seemed less… less brooding. She didn’t think that was possible, considering the climate they were in, but she’d been in a good mood that morning, at least, up until now.

He wore head-to-toe black, with a leather jacket and matching glove on his left hand to cover his cybernetic limb. Darcy swallowed, putting aside her mug haphazardly.

She walked toward him, raising her arms to bring him into an embrace. He smelt the same, but feeling him holding her in his arms transported her to another time.

She couldn’t believe that she’d tried, on purpose, to forget him, to place him in a memory and be a stranger to him once again.

She knew then that no matter what, she’d be his friend until the day she died. She broke away from him, glancing over at Jane.

“Can I come back later?”

“ _Yeah_ ,” Jane said, who seemed keen to be left out of their private reunion, her eyes widened as she stared down at her laptop.

Darcy walked out with Bucky, aware of him beside her, of the sounds his shoes made as they walked through the grass to the trees on the edge of the property. They were only dead trees now, but marked where the facility ended. There were markers on the ground where extensions were meant to go.

Darcy didn’t know what to say. To her surprise, Bucky spoke first.

“Steve meant to leave,” he said. “He was gonna go back to Peggy in the fifties.”

“What?” Darcy said, her eyes widening.

“He changed his mind. Went the long way back to get Natasha.”

“I’m glad he did,” Darcy said.

“Yeah,” Bucky murmured. “Yeah, me, too.”

Darcy felt her eyes smart, which happened so easily those days, but she looked skyward to try to contain herself, letting go a shaky breath.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, but Bucky shook his head in the corner of her eye. “I don’t mean to cry.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s…” she fanned herself a little, managing to look at him again, seeing his eyes soften at the sight of her.

He was so beautiful Darcy ached to touch him.

“It’s so good to hear your voice, is all,” she whispered.

She gave a wet laugh and Bucky smiled at her then, his eyes turning glassy.

“Hey, c’mere,” he whispered, and she was tugged into his arms, and she sighed with relief that he did it, her arms coming up to cling to him.

-

Jane kept glancing her way when Darcy returned. After five minutes of it, Darcy looked up from her phone, frowning.

“Something you want to share with the class, Doctor Foster?”

“Where’s he been?” Jane said, and Darcy’s lips parted.

“I dunno.”

“He been to therapy? He seems different.”

“We’re all different,” Darcy said, shrugging. “I’m… no, I’m not different. Still a failure.”

She snorted, looking away. She felt the air shift and Jane didn’t drop it, keep staring at her, a frown creasing appearing.

“A failure?” she repeated, and Darcy gave a little shrug.

“I say that in a self-deprecating sort of way –”

“Are you fucking – _kidding me_?” Jane snapped, throwing a pen at her, the object bouncing off of Darcy’s head.

She clutched the spot it hit, yelling:

“Ow! Dude, what the fuck?”

“Darcy Lewis, you are not a failure!” Jane said, pointing at her with fierce eyes. “You… you picked me up every time I had a setback. You helped me, most of the time without me even asking –”

Their voices were echoing in the space, and Darcy’s face burned as she anticipated people overhearing their conversation easily.

“Shh!” Darcy hissed, putting her finger to her lips. “You have _got to_ lower your voice –”

“You’re insane! Since when are you a failure? Excuse me? When am I _ever_ wrong?” Jane barked, and Darcy put up her hands.

“Oh, my God! I’ve never finished anything in my life! Everything good I’ve screwed up, or walked away from –”

She lowered her arms, shutting her eyes, feeling all passion drain from her instantly, knowing she’d already gone into Bucky territory.

“God,” she whispered, passing a hand over her face.

They fell silent, the workmen outside filling the pause. Jane sighed a little.

“Darcy, it takes two people to break up.”

“That’s not…” Darcy put up a hand. “I don’t want you to make me feel better because of my decision. It was me, Jane. I did that.”

“He didn’t make it easier for you.”

Darcy nodded, conceding. She hoped to drop the subject, and Jane did, but not before leaning over to hug her tight.

-

She saw him again, walking out with Sam, their arms full of boxes.

Sam stopped, grinning from ear to ear.

“What’s up, Darcy?”

“Not much,” she replied, feeling her stomach flip like it used to, years ago, when she first was around Bucky.

It was like that time now, having this barrier of a whole other person between them. If Sam was picking up on Bucky and Darcy checking one another out, he didn’t seem to be bothered by it. Darcy felt herself blush when she accidentally made eye-contact with her ex.

“You barely recognize this guy, like me?” Sam teased.

“Yeah,” she said, and Bucky’s lips parted, his eyes lingering on her person. “I like it, though.”

He did seem more centered, focused but not unsettled by his surroundings. She’d never seen him like this before, joking with Sam openly as they moved the stacks of boxes into the back of the office as Darcy sat at her makeshift desk.

She tried to think of a reason to follow them out, to invite herself wherever they were going. She didn’t have to, since Sam finally addressed her again as they were leaving.

“You wanna grab some lunch, Lewis?”

“Um,” she said, worried that if she looked at Bucky she’d turn a brighter shade of red. “Probably shouldn’t.”

She didn’t want to make it weird and awkward. She ducked her head, shaking it. She was left alone and she felt sadder, and childish.

Jane appeared a moment later, chewing on a candy bar, pointing behind her.

“Sam and Bucky –”

“Don’t,” Darcy cut her off.

-

She lay awake at night, but she didn’t beat herself up over it. That was the old her, the one that thought romance was a giant cliché. The old her would find out where he was staying and invite herself over. She’d follow him around and do whatever he wanted, just to make him stay with her.

She loved him. Of course she did. She never expected that to stop, even though he hurt her years ago. But this wasn’t about her, and what she wanted. It was about what was best for her, and for him. She’d heard he’d worked on the brainwashed parts of his brain, but she didn’t have the courage to confront him on it. She didn’t know if that changed how he felt about her at all. Overtime, she suspected he’d not loved her as much as she’d loved him, and that was fine. It really was fine.

She told herself to treasure the time they had together, because she didn’t regret it, not even when they were first over and she cried herself to sleep day after day.

She almost collided with him when she stepped out of her car, her arms full of papers that she’d decided to read over that morning, after retrieving them from the SHIELD offices earlier.

“Whoa,” he said, and he helped catch a couple folders that almost fell to the ground, but his reflexes were sharp.

He handed them back to her.

“What’re these?”

“Intern applications,” she said. “I volunteered to look over the resumes for Jane before I actually make her choose any of them.”

“Sounds engrossing,” Bucky murmured, a hint of a smile on his lips.

“Oh, it’s pretty riveting stuff,” Darcy said, flipping through to one she snuck a peak at earlier. “This kid Benji says they show leadership skills because they have five hundred Tik-Tok followers.”

“Go Benji,” Bucky said.

There was a pause and Darcy glanced over at the portable office in the distance.

“I should –”

“Would you ever wanna,” Bucky began, and Darcy froze, staring at him. “Would you wanna get dinner sometime?”

She kept staring at him for several seconds.

“Or I could – I could make dinner,” he said.

He was smiling at her shyly, and she felt as if she was a different person, somehow taller. She managed to find her voice, blinking at him.

“I… Uh, sure,” she said, nodding.

“Tomorrow?”

“Okay,” she said, and she pressed her lips together, hoping she wasn’t about to blurt something embarrassing and bare her soul to him.

“Okay,” he echoed, and he smiled, a muted one. He rose a gloved finger to indicate her hoard of folders. “Have fun reading.”

“Yeah…”

He walked away, toward another car several spaces away from hers, and Darcy turned her heel, heading down the hill.

-

Did she look older, too?

She was staring at herself in the mirror, putting her hair up and turning this way and that, wondering if lines were appearing and she hadn’t noticed them. She knew she didn’t dress like a child anymore. She liked long-sleeved tops in maroon and black, fitted jeans with sleek boots. She still liked her t-shirts and sneakers, but they were better taken care of.

She let out a raspberry at the sight of herself, before adding some concealer under her eyes to cover up her dark circles. She didn’t want to cover her whole face, though it was tempting. She put on a subtle lip tint, tried to take deep breaths as she told herself repeatedly to get a grip.

Bucky had texted her earlier in the day, telling her he’d come by to pick her up. He’d chosen a place in town, a little Italian restaurant that only recently reopened. Darcy had something corny like **I love Italian** , and Bucky had replied instantly **Yes, I remember**.

She slipped into the front seat, shutting the door behind her, and he peeled off from the curb as Darcy’s heart began to hammer.

“Good day?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Darcy said. “Jane and I finally found five candidates. These kids are flocking because of everything that’s happened.”

Bucky glanced her way for a second before his eyes were back on the road.

“Yeah, I figured there’ll be plenty of volunteers,” he said. “Sam said we’d need try-outs for the new crew.”

“I heard a rumor Steve’s retiring,” Darcy said.

He looked at her and broke into a little smile. “Who told you that?”

“A little bird. Not actually a _little_ bird. Bruce,” she said. “He said… Steve and Nat, they’re -?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, smiling still with his eyes swinging away. “He… wanted that little slice of life.”

“Good for him,” Darcy murmured, looking down at her hands in her lap. “I always hoped he’d do that, eventually.”

She’d seen Steve and Nat bickering many times before like an old married couple, and she remembered one night when Nat had fallen asleep on Steve’s arm and Darcy shot him a look across the room, at some New Year’s gathering Bucky had bailed on. Steve only held Darcy’s gaze then, his brows rising in challenge, as if to say, _I’m working on it_.

They parked a few minutes later, and when Bucky was reversing Darcy found herself staring at the tendons of his neck as he twisted his body around, his hand on her headrest as he backed his car. She glanced away before she was caught.

Their table was a window seat, and Darcy couldn’t remember Bucky ever taking her somewhere so nice. Bucky pushed her chair in for her and Darcy’s stomach flipped, her eyes focusing on the tablecloth as Bucky settled in the chair opposite her, their knees bumping.

“They have cheesy garlic bread,” Bucky whispered, and Darcy wondered if he was saying that to himself, and she smirked, taking the laminated menu from the stand in the center of the table.

They ordered wine and pasta, with the cheesy garlic bread. Darcy ate until she was full, telling Bucky about the day she woke up in Norway. Now, she could turn it into a comedy to create a distance from it. She hoped to never feel that level of spooked that she felt that day.

“We were screaming ‘five’ in Norwegian, over and over again. There was this – huge fisherman there, terrified of these two little women, but he _insisted_ – poor guy…”

Bucky chuckled, lifting his glass of wine. “What convinced you?”

“I dunno, finding out you look pretty good for thirty-eight helped convince Jane,” Darcy said, and Bucky threw his head back and laughed loudly, Darcy’s face hurting from smiling.

When his laughter died down, Darcy leaned on her elbow, her chin in her hand.

“You’re one hundred and six now,” she murmured, and he gave a little smile, nodding.

“That is technically true,” he said. “How does it look on me?”

Darcy felt her lips quirk again. “ _Really_ good.”

They fell silent, Darcy’s eyes averting to her fork, then to Bucky’s hand that lay on the table, his flesh hand.

She could still remember how his calluses felt when they scraped against her skin, how someone with such a rough touch could be so tender that it made Darcy catch her breath, she’d probably never learn.

“Tired?”

She looked at him, snorting softly. “Could you tell?”

“You’re… far away,” he said eventually, and she nodded.

That was fair. She kept doing that more and more those days, her thoughts occupying her when she knew it was better for her to be concentrating on the present.

“You know, I used to lie to people all the time,” she said, feeling a lump in her throat. “About not having any regrets. Or… I’d tell people I didn’t remember my mistakes, so I didn’t have to regret them.”

She didn’t know why she was telling him this, other than the obvious, but it didn’t help either of them to hear this. She held her breath for several seconds and let it go, rolling her lip and not looking his way.

“I know that feeling,” Bucky murmured.

“I was so stupid,” she breathed, finally looking him in the eye.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, sweetheart.”

She didn’t argue. She didn’t want to make it worse, so the conversation was dropped, at least until Bucky picked up the check without a word, and he followed Darcy out the door into the night.

The air smelt of rain and Darcy looked up at the sky, seeing clouds beginning to cover the moon.

“Thanks, that was nice,” she said, when she looked back at Bucky.

“You deserve it,” he said. “You always did. I just…”

His sentence fell away.

“We should get out of here,” Darcy said, and his brows lifted slightly.

“Okay.”

He drove them back to block Darcy’s hotel was on. It turned out that he was staying in a little bed and breakfast place on the corner, and Darcy had never spotted him. She said he should show her his place, since her hotel was boring, and Bucky smiled at her.

“Okay.”

She wasn’t worried about seeming too enthusiastic. He’d asked her out to dinner. He was the one hugging her, and smiling down at her… Darcy tried to not be defensive already. No-one was judging her. It didn’t stop from her nerves beginning to set in, walking up to the front door and stepping inside from the street, the woman at the front desk beaming at them as they came in.

“Hello, Mister Barnes,” she said.

“It’s Bucky, Mrs Waters.”

She narrowed her eyes slightly, smiling. “Then you’ll have to call me Cheryl.”

“Goodnight, Cheryl,” Bucky said, and Darcy gave a little wave to the woman, who watched them leave.

They took the stairs up to the furnished apartment, and Darcy couldn’t get over how nice the place was, and so _normal_.

“What’s wrong with this place?” she said aloud, as Bucky took out a key to fit in the door.

“Nothin’,” he said, sounding pleased.

It was cozy, the furniture reminding Darcy of her grandmother’s house as a kid, complete with a little glass candy dish on the coffee table in front of the TV. She hung around, not sure where to sit.

“Tea?” Bucky said, and she glanced his way, genuinely confused by his proposal.

She nodded vaguely, and he walked into the kitchen, where she watched him murmur:

“Tea, tea, tea…”

He seemed to just enjoy himself for the hell of it, and it was so bizarre for Darcy to witness it, if this was the same man who pushed her away years ago. As he prepared the tea, she sat down at the little breakfast table and waited.

He sat down beside her, lifting the mug to tap with hers.

“Cheers,” he said.

“Cheers,” Darcy replied. She blew on the tea, which was peppermint, before taking a little sip.

She looked down at his gloved fist. He reached for her then, holding her hand in his, their eyes meeting.

“You’re happy.”

Darcy didn’t mean the words to come out, but there they were. She thought maybe it sounded accusatory, but Bucky’s lips quirked ever so slightly, his eyes falling to her mouth.

“I’m better.”

“I’m glad,” Darcy said, and she was. She thought maybe she’d resent that he was better without her, but she didn’t mind.

“You… seeing anyone?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “You?”

He shook his head, and she mirrored him, a breath of a laugh escaping her. She looked down at her mug of tea, watching the steam furling in the air as it rose.

“Truth is,” Bucky began, and her eyes swung to meet his, and he wasn’t smiling anymore. “I never stopped thinkin’ about you.”

Darcy swallowed.

“Not once,” he said. “And I kept trying to stop it, because I hurt you –”

“You didn’t –” she began to lie, but he ducked his head, shaking it with a little laugh.

“No, sweetheart. No. I did,” he said. “And I thought for a long time it was better that we didn’t see each other again, but then – but then, I woke up, and…”

There was that tug from deep within her chest, the one that made her run toward him every time. She pressed her lips together, waiting.

“I thought, when I woke up,” Bucky said, taking a deep breath. “That if I ever got another chance to be… be beside you, I’d hold you, and I’d-I’d kiss you, and I’d never, ever let you go. Never again.”

Darcy’s eyes stung and she looked at the ceiling, a laugh ebbing from her, her chin wobbling.

“And you think you can just say that –”

“Yeah, I think so,” Bucky said, and he was turning in his seat to cup her face with his flesh hand, which Darcy covered with her own, his eyes locking with hers.

“You think you can just say that, and I can come with you and start over… and… spend the rest of my life with you?” she whispered. “And everything will work out?”

“Yeah,” he rasped, his throat bobbing. “Because I’ve got you.”

She surged into him, catching his lip between her two, and he tilted his head to deepen it, his tongue slipping inside, and Darcy’s tears were spilling over, her heart hammering as he took over, and it was undeniable, just how much they wanted each other, and nothing was going to stop them now from showing it.

He scooped her up, carrying her into his bedroom, kicking the door shut as she landed on the mattress, and they rolled together, clothes tugged down and thrown onto the floor…

He tasted the same, but his touch was somehow more, and she realized then that he was worshipping her, staring down at her with such warm that Darcy had to close her eyes, overcome by the feeling.

“I don’t mean to cry…”

“You can cry, it’s alright,” he whispered. “We can stop –”

“No, I need you,” she whispered, tugging him into another kiss.

They were down to their underwear and he grunted when her hand ghosted over the tent in his boxers, a moan escaping soon after.

“I know what you mean,” he whispered, his hands tugging at her underwear. “I need you, too…”

It was lovemaking. Darcy realized as it was happening, by the reverence of it, how she didn’t smother her expressions or try to please him. She reached for him, and loved him completely, Bucky buried deep inside her as they rocked together, their legs tangling as his face was in her hair.

When she came, she began to cry again.

“I love you,” he whispered, moving up to look her in the eye, their foreheads brushing.

They stayed still for several moments, their arms wrapped around one another as they breathed together.

Bucky finally lifted his head again, looking at peace for the first time in all the years she’d known him.

“I love you,” he whispered again.

“I love you…”

He was slow, building up and up, both of them trembling by his end, and he came with his mouth on hers, panting in Darcy’s neck when he all but collapsed on her.

A little later, they lay on their sides, Bucky’s metal fingers trailing her shoulder and arm.

“Your skin’s still just as soft…”

“I doubt it,” Darcy whispered.

He nuzzled her with his nose, pressing a kiss to her cheek.

“It is. And you better take the compliments I give you,” he whispered.

She began to laugh breathlessly, and he grinned down at her, stroking her face with his knuckles.

They fell asleep that way, noses brushing, Bucky’s arms enveloping her, sharing the same pillow.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> [my Tumblr](http://grimeysociety.tumblr.com/)


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